Golden Age on the Horizon
by alicat54
Summary: What if the Golden Age was the future of the movie? Based on the rotg kink meme prompt. Chapter 2: And Baby Tooth Makes Two, or Tooth and the Daughters of Flight.
1. Bunny: A Fae Falls in Love

Disclaimer: if i owned this intellectual property, the movie would have had less plot holes.

=Bunny=

It started many hundreds of years ago, when the Piper brought a town full of children to the undying lands under the hills as a gift for your queen.

The Piper will be rewarded richly, as the queen has always longed for a child.

You can understand her desire, fae cannot easily bare children with each other and finding a mortal lover to marry only made the desperate fae mortal too. It is not a fate you would wish on anyone, least of all your queen.

As the party of children and fantastical creatures was about to vanish beneath the hills for another hundred years, a sink hole opened swallowing half of the royal guard, and a shape leapt from the earth.

Being a member of the queens guard yourself, you change into a wolf and leap upon the fool who dare attack the ruler of fae. You taste blood as you bite, but the wound is not deep enough to damage. For once in your extensive life, you find yourself flung aside.

You, the fiercest fighter in the realm who chews on rock giants for fun, overpowered by some mysterious assailant who quite easily dispatches the rest of the fae before rounding on the queen herself.

"You are not to touch these children," the figure growls, long ears twitching.

"I would have loved them, fed them treats and given them fine cloths-"

"And then when they tried to return home they would have turned to dust the second their feet touched mortal earth again."

Your queen is cowed. You are impressed.

The party is allowed to return to the fae realm, till the door opens again in one hundred years. The assailant's green eyes watch them go through, defeated and childless. The blood coating your teeth sparks on your tongue with a zesty earth flavored magic.

Next time you see the mysterious assailant is at Midsummer in Athens. The king and queen are fighting over some trivial matter concerning ownership of a boy given into the queen's care, and you have decided to avoid the crossfire by scouting out the wood in which the queen will be staying.

At first you see a furry form hunched over a patch of clover and think it might be a bear, but it senses you and straightens up, showing long ears. A bask lies beside him, half full of strange bristled twigs and small jars of color.

Stealth unnecessary, you stride from the greenery, every inch the fierce warrior. He has the gall to look unimpressed.

"The Queen of the Fae will be present in these woods tonight, leave now."

He leans back on his haunches and grins. Your eyes narrow.

"Is that so?" his voice lilts oddly, but your nature allows you the ability to communicate in all tongues.

Your hand (for you are human shaped at the moment) brushes against the stone dagger at your hip. You are eager for something, but you are not quite sure if it is for a fight.

He flicks an ear at you, nose twitching. "I hope she's not planning on stealin' any more kids?"

You wish to see his pelt at the foot of your bed, and every morning when it got dirty, you could take it out and beat it. Your voice is level as you speak.

"We are here for revelry only..." you trail off invitingly.

"El-ahraiah."

The sounds don't resonate properly. You frown. "That is not your true name."

He smirks. "You have to be trickier than that to get my true name, miss. I know about your kinds of magic."

The dagger is in the air before you consciously let it go, but the rabbit has vanished. A six pointed flower with waxy yellow petals and the basket are all the evidence that he was there at all.

You take them both with you when you return home. Not for any kind of sentimentality, of course, but a predator must know her prey in order to hunt.

The basket's contents are strange, but you spent an enjoyable few years painting the white stones of the riverbank red and blue, as well as the faces of any unwary fae asleep near your pasture.

You use the colors sparingly, but the jars were small and soon run out. You take the basket with you to the mortal plane at the end of the century. Your queen has decided to not venture out this time, but has allowed her subjects to wander at their leisure.

He may not have told you his true name, but you have tasted his blood. He cannot easily hide his location from you.

You find him across the sea in a prairie surrounded by miles of red grass and large lowing creatures with horns. His ears twitch at your arrival, but that is all. In his lap a bundle of papers tied loosely with yarn occupies his attention. He scratches a half burnt twig against it, leaving a pattern of black lines.

Creeping close, you offer the basket of empty jars. He glances down. "I see you are not returning the brushes."

"They were left behind, and so are mine," you counter. He tilts his head thoughtfully.

"So, why you here? It's obviously not to return my property."

You want to bare your wolf teeth and leap upon this uppity creature, but your errand keeps you civil. "I want more of those colors."

"Do you now?"

"Yes."

"Why not just steal some from the humans?"

"Their colors smell. Yours hold the true hue."

He idly scratches his head with a hind leg. "Well I'm rather occupied at the moment, so can't help you."

You bristle. "You don't look very busy."

"Well ya see, Brother Fox will be running up over the horizon in a minute cryin' something fierce about the sky falling. I would hate to miss the product of all my hard work. He makes such funny expressions, and I want to get this portrait just right."

You think on this, before sitting down. "It would be unfair of me to cheat you out of your pleasure, Mister Rabbit."

Brother Fox is a silly creature, but with enough cunning to gain some satisfaction out of tricking. He manages to catch your rabbit, but the sly fellow convinces the predator to throw him into a patch of briars where he easily escapes.

You laugh, and take the opportunity to slip away with his papers and charcoal while he is distracted. Jars of color can be gotten later.

You lay the papers against the stones you painted by your river, admiring the black sketches of flowers and landscapes. You imagine what the pictures would look like in color, and the artist skilled enough to paint such works.

You built a house of white quartz and encourage sweet clovers to grow around it. You turn into a rabbit and taste each root and leave before planting the most delicious in a corner of your valley. Rare plants of strange color and beauty are painstakingly sought out and arranged near the door. You don't touch the walls, but instead imagine what could be painted on them.

At the end of one hundred years, you find him in an arid land of sand, speaking with a large jackrabbit. The mortal beast starts at your arrival. You stamp, causing it to dart back underground into its warren.

"You didn't have to scare him away," he says.

You stamp your dark hooves, eyes flashing with red fire. "Why trouble myself with the cares of mortal creatures?"

"Then I would appreciate it if you did not scare my believers."

"You are a god then?" Curiosity concerning his nature has plagued you for more idle years than you care to count.

He shrugs. "I'm just a story, even to the rabbits."

The news is reassuring. Gods have restrictions set upon their nature which could complicate your plans.

"Well, little story, since you look unoccupied, could I ask a favor of you?"

"Yeah?"

"I just want some help painting my new house. The walls are white stone and rather boring. It wouldn't take more tan a day for you I'm sure."

He smirks. "And I suppose when I return, only one hundred years will have passed in the mortal world?"

Muscles flex along your horse's neck, tossing your mane to the opposite shoulder. "It is not that long. My home has many sweet grasses around it, and flowers unseen in the mortal world. Don't you want to come and see? Just for a moment, I promise."

"Thanks for the offer, but I'm quite content where I am thanks."

Disappointment does not creep through your heart, you foresaw the possibility of his refusal and planned accordingly. While not common for someone to refuse a kindly invitation from a Fae, it was not considered dishonorable to persuade your guests to come in other ways.

You nod, playing as if you had relented, and trot away. Mass ratios and velocity accelerations calculate themselves idly in your mind, before you rear and gallop towards the giant rabbit. Leaping into the air, your hooves gain claws and your teeth sharpen ready to snatch at soft fur.

You do not expect him to spin and catch your momentum, leaving you in a headlock against the dirt.

"Easy there, no need to get violent." His voice hardens in a way you do not like.

Needles prick the edges of your heart. Lungs labor under his weight, and you would change into something smaller to wriggle free, if not for the strange curved wooden weapon at your throat.

"I will care for you," you wheeze, "I speak truly of my home and the delightful wonders waiting there for you. Why don't you want to come home with me? I would cherish your presence, and you would be an honored guest and revered warrior among my people. Please, I ask again, come with me."

"No," his breath tickles against your ears. "Go home." The weight lifts, and you scramble to your feet, but he is already gone.

You do not sulk. The house of white stone needed to be removed because it blocked the view, and the gardens were right in the middle of a walking path you wanted to create. The papers being thrown into the river was an unlucky gust of wind, and the stones were much too gaudy to be let in the open. They looked much better at the bottom of a canyon.

The undying yellow flower, planted ages ago by the stream, remains untouched. You brush your nose across its waxy stem, so fragile and easily torn from the earth. It still smells of his magic. One chomp and it's nothing but a tingle on the back of your tongue.

You do not move much until the portal opens again. Your valley, tuned as only nature could to your emotions, has caused heavy scented purple flowers to sprout, coating your home with hyacinths.

You dig up as many as you can carry.

His home is not a place you have ever tried to find out of politeness, but you know what his magic tastes like now.

He is on the opposite side of the world when you come out of hiding with your burdens. You can't actually get into his home (the wards are quite strong), but you sense that this location has been used as an entrance many times. He would be able to see your gift here.

Your paws are muddy, and your fur caked with dirt, but the entrance to his burrow is painted purple with your apology. As a fellow creature of nature, you hope he will understand.

Next century you don't go out, however a small pixie who did gives you an egg painted with snowdrops and pink lilac. You ignore the silly creature's attempt to receive payment for the gift, and cradle the white shell between human palms, smiling.

It spoils eventually, like all mortal goods. You bury it in the ground beside the stream. It sprouts daffodils. You wonder if the valley is responding to your emotions or the magic of the egg. You hope it is his, un-requented love is such fun to manipulate...but you know better than to believe that.

Humans say that Fae have no souls to reach paradise and no heart to feel. You're not sure about the first, but the second is untrue. Emotions just come with the force of an ocean or not at all. Fae never did anything half way.

The valley fills with primrose.

You spend the next hundred years practicing your shape shifting to look like a large anthropomorphic rabbit. The forms separately are not unfamiliar to you, however combining the circulatory and digestive tracts of a human and rabbit proves to be trickier than you anticipated.

Your friend Pea-Blossom comments once on your behavior, and spends the next month walking with a limp.

When the day you may cross from the realm arrives, your queen bars the way.

"Dark shadows are stirring in the mortal realm. Tales of iron that travels through the air like horseflies have come to my attention, and until the shadow passes none may enter that realm."

Your whiskers wilt at the news, but hope springs eternal. Surely the human's squabbles could not last another hundred years?

You wait. You try to keep good cheer with poinsettia and the memories brought with the power of blue periwinkle. Before you realize it, the gate is open and barred to you once more. This time it is not just flies of iron, but carriages without horses that belch clouds of sickening black into the air. Even the household Brownies are hesitant to remain in the mortal plane.

You listen to their squeaky chatter of a green bird woman who collects teeth and hires fae helpers at a good starting salary of golden nectar and cheese. The don't know anything about large rabbits, except for the one that has taken over one of the old goddess's fertility festivals. You want to pry further, but the creatures scatter before you can catch one.

Another hundred years passes in the way you think mortals experience time: every moment stretching to an eternity of lonely lifetimes. Carolina roses cluster around your bed, warning of love's danger, but the primroses tug at your heart.

You turn into a hare, one of your smallest fastest forms, and hide beside the gate opening. Rumors have spread that the queen will seal the gate permanently, thanks to the rumors of nightmares running free once more. The Brownies gossiped that the bird woman had defeated the nightmare king, so there was nothing to fear, however no one listens to Brownies. They spent too much time close to humans.

You rush to the gate as it opens for the last time, ignoring the shapes which call you back. The way back will be shut to you now, you know this, but you cannot stand another empty moment. You feel your form stretch, enlarging into the shape you have practiced for countless years.

There is no one to say goodbye to as you step onto the mortal plane: the other Pooka were distant cousins at best, and lived in such seclusion from each other that seeing more than one in a space together was not a common occurrence.

There is too much metal in the world, and it burns against your senses as you step onto a dead path of ground that once was a lush hill enclosed valley. Humans have spread even this far, you think, before venturing out. You find him near one of the mortals black roads, watching the ugly iron and steel contraptions race and roar.

"Haven't seen you in a while," he says. In his hands are a lump of charred wood and a ream of papers.

"It is not as easy for fae to visit the mortal plane as it once was."

He nodded in understanding. "The world has changed a bit. Doesn't explain why you are here now."

You hop beside him, cautiously letting your shoulder brush his. "This is the last time I shall cross into the mortal realm."

His hands stilled. "So you're saying farewell."

"That all depends on you, I suppose. I only need to live in a place of magic to get by."

"Didn't your lot used to marry mortals and become humans?"

You tug on your ear, a gesture unbecoming of the fierce warrior you are. "There is no human I love to do that with."

"Tell me your name," he suddenly says.

You look up into his green eyes. Your mouth is dry. He could destroy you, or worse, enslave you with the knowledge of your true name. Your heart hammers and you think of primroses.

You tell him.

He smiles.

"The light is fading, so I can't sketch any more. Would you like to come home with me, or must you run off and enjoy your last day on earth?"

Your chest hurts and you resist running a hand over your eyes. "I don't think I would like anything more," you say, and follow him down the rabbit hole.

=Bunny=

From the rotg kink meme prompt: What is the movie universe became the book universe?

linki link to original prompt: rotg_kink: Round 3

Written in second person, because I once read a very interesting second person perspective story and I wanted to give it a shot. Let me know what you think! Yes, the fae in this chapter is an OC. I wanted to combine the idea that bunny is an idea given shape, and she is a mythical creature.

I plan to write a chapter for each character if I can think up enough.

Next Up: Tooth

Flower meanings:

Primrose: I cannot live without you

Hyacinth: I'm sorry

Snowdrop: acceptance

Daffodil: unrequented love


	2. Tooth: And Baby Makes Two

Disclaimer: if i owned this intellectual property, the movie would have had less plot holes.

= Tooth=

It started when Jack brought Baby Tooth home.

You see him through the eyes you have guarding the entrances ever since Pitch attacked, but it takes a few minutes to meet him 'in person'. You order your girls to take him to a waiting room while you work.

North asked you once why you needed to micro manage all your fairies.

"They are smart enough to get teeth by themselves, no?"

"Well yes," you concede, "but sometimes I forget which ones are on jobs and which ones aren't. I just have them come to me when I forget there are there." He looked confused, so you try to explain. "It is like tapping all your fingers and toes in different patterns; if I concentrate on one more than the others it will get more efficient at the cost of the others becoming less. I've run a flock of my girls ragged by accident that way."

He still looked confused, but by then you had run out of patience and metaphors. You disliked being so rude, but sometimes you forget what it is like not to live in your own head. Or in all the tiny heads of your faeries, but they were just extensions of your psyche indistinguishable from that which made you.

You can imagine the other guardian's amusement if they ever realized how many unspoken commands you sent for every spoken one.

The last idle flock sent on its way to Canada (it's hockey season), you flutter to greet your guest.

"Hey Jack, what brings you here? Not that I'm not glad to see you," your home is closer to the equator than what you would think comfortable for a spirit of winter.

Jack fidgets with his staff. "It's Baby Tooth, I think she's sick or something."

Every amethyst eye in the room snaps to the frost sprite. Across the globe faeries have a moment of unguided confusion, before your attention filters back to power their movements.

"Are you all right?" You don't remember closing your eyes, and Jack looks concerned.

"It's nothing, just a hiccup- I mean headache. Sick? What do you mean?"

"She hasn't been able to fly right," he tells you while reaching into the pocket of his blue hoodie. "Also, she's been really hungry and sleeps all the time."

His fingers open to reveal a sleeping puff of green feathers. You nudge with your mind, but the fairy doesn't move. This could be bad news. If one fairy was showing symptoms of illness, it could foretell something wrong with the flock as a whole, or even worse, something wrong with your mind.

The fairy by the window shudders. The month of dissociative identity was not fun, nor was the long haul through reconciling ID and ego so your flock would stop fighting with each other. One consequence of that little fiasco was you no longer trying to hide your appreciation of teeth. You truly felt embarrassed whenever someone reprimanded you for poking around their (Jack's) mouth, but it beat the alternative. Fighting against inner impulses results in lots of feather pulling.

You narrow your focus back to Jack standing in the waiting room. "Put her on the table over here, I'll get a pillow..."

Three fairies buzz over carrying that and an appropriately sized blanket.

Jack carefully lays the sleeping form down, brushing a cold finger over the yellow crest on her head. "Is she going to be ok?"

You are confused for a moment, and want to say that you were fine and standing right there, but then remember that Jack meant Baby Tooth. It was as if someone asked if your right wing's feelings were hurt.

"She'll be ok once I find out what's wrong," you say, instead of an explanation about the nature of your powers.

It takes some prompting to make Jack leave, but eventually he flies off to help North with something.

Baby Tooth snoozes gently on the green silk, oblivious to your mental commands.

"Wake up," you half shout. "Fly? Oh..." Worry makes the quills of your feathers itch.

You leave several eyes with instructions to alert you when the sleeping fairy awoke, and zoom to the tallest spire in in your home- the meditation room.

It smells of wood shavings and dust, light seeping onto the workbench through the lone window. Two half carved bodies at on a shelf, while a third stood with a coat of feathers pasted to its back. You disliked leaving new girls unfinished like this, but the magic involved with putting pieces of yourself into your art work was tedious at best. At worst they would not 'come to life' at all, and become someone's Christmas present next year.

Carving life from oak is not what you are here for now though.

Carefully, you clear a space and kneel in the room's center- the center of your home- and breathe.

You think about your main body: listen to your beating heart, flex every feather and muscle. Think about the feeling in the tips of your fingers and the phantom sensations in your dragonfly wings.

Go further down your awareness: look through every pair of eyes (teeth, pillows, sky, leaves, the outside of the meditation room). Hearts hum in one rhythm. Find the one fairy who sleeps, see through her sleeping eyes-

You jolt back into awareness, adrenalin coursing through your veins.

Reaching out to Jack's little companion you felt something...alien. Something other, where there should have been only familiarity. The connection was still there, proven by you being able to feel anything at all, but it was...thin. Stretched from a telephone pole to a hair's breadth.

What did that mean?

Three pairs of eyes call your attention, and you fly back to the waiting room. The sun has begun its descent towards the horizon, and you wonder how much you have let yourself become distracted.

Six idle flocks are sent to China before you make it to the ground floor. You are not distracting yourself. You are not afraid of what waits for you behind the eyes of that little...unknown fairy.

Mystery is fine, though it sometimes means danger it must not always be so. You take a breath and open the door.

"Mama!" trills a happy whistle.

Multiple pairs of eyes snap to the bubbly fairy resting on the pillow. "What did you say?" This is not what you are expecting.

"Mama, I'm hungry," the fairy trills again, in the same chirping language you made up for your girls to converse with other beings. You have never been on the receiving end without the aid of being the one talking.

You approach the table on foot, unsure if your wings are steady enough to carry you. "You called me mother."

The fairy bounces happily on little bird feet, arms stretched high, begging to be picked up. Her heart buzzes warmly against your palm, and you don't need the fairy perched on your shoulder to compare the differences.

"Because you're my Mama! Jack said so!"

Once, you collected the tooth of a little boy who drew pictures of boa constrictors eating elephants. He could not understand how the images he drew could be misinterpreted as hats by the adults around him. Art, once released into the world, takes on a life of its own, no matter how much of themselves the creators put into it.

Understanding filters through the murky unknown to illuminate an answer in your mind. You clutch the tiny body to your heart and sit down before you fall over.

Jack, that wonderful, innocent, naive little boy, believed your fairies were your daughters. He differentiated one from the flock and made her an individual, and his belief became truth.

"You...you are Baby Tooth, aren't you."

The fairy in your hands frowns, blinking one blue and one amethyst eye up at you. "Who else would I be?"

"Who indeed," you chuckle. The room becomes blurry. You blink, and something wet drops to the carpet. "Now, what can mother get you to eat?"

Baby Tooth chitters happily over a pot of nectar suited to her hummingbird like metabolism. You notice her green feathers are ragged in patches with white tips poking out underneath. Her body has also grown too large for her wings to properly carry.

When Jack pops by to see how Baby Tooth is doing, you assure him that all is well.

"She's fine," you tell him, "just doing some extra growing up."

"I didn't know your fairies did that," he says, though his fingers loosen from around his staff.

"Neither did I," you laugh. "I think it best if she stay here and rest for a while though."

Jack nodded, his feet tapping anxiously on the gold floor. "Ok. Is there anything I can do?"

"You have done more than enough Jack."

You hire more household sprites to collect teeth around Europe so you may concentrate more on your baby. The surplus faeries catalogue and organize the teeth, the numbers and names taking less active attention to work through.

You nearly molt when Baby Tooth's beak falls off to reveal a cute button nose. She is about the size of a human toddler with downy white feathers over her chest and arms. After assuring yourself that this was just a normal process for a growing fairy (you are not actually sure, there is no precedent, but Bunny tells you to stop worrying) you make a special tooth box for it and put it in a place of honor.

You throw a party when her first tooth grows in.

Once Bunny invited your baby on a play date. You agree, knowing that interaction with someone other than you and Jack would be good for Baby Tooth, but can't help worrying your wings until she returns several hours later chattering happily about all the games Bunny's children know.

Soon, much too soon, Baby Tooth reaches your shoulder in height. You know she won't get any bigger, because her wings fit her proportions for her to fly. You recall when her wings fell off soon after her beak, and the arduous wait for the new ones to grow in. Your wings are designed like a dragon fly's wings with a tough chitin like material instead of the muscle and feathers of birds. They grow in once and remain that size forever. Part of you misses having to carry your child everywhere with you.

"Mama," she asks one day, not in the chirpy language of childhood, but the warm tones of an adolescent. "Mama, can I help make winter with Jack this year?"

You smooth the gold crest on your daughter's head and look into her mismatched eyes. "Flying around the world in a day is still too tiring for you. How will you get home every night?"

Baby's feathers fluff. "I'm not a kid any more, I can stay out for a few nights...or the whole winter..."

Every fairy in the world, save the one standing in front of you, feels their heart skip a beat.

"You want to go away? For an entire season?"

"Well, then there's the other hemisphere too to do..."

A refusal bares itself on the tip of your tongue. You want nothing more than to lock your daughter in the highest room of the tallest tower and keep her there where it is safe with you at home.

She looks at you uncertainly, willing to obey whatever you say despite how much pain it would cause her.

Love burns the corners of your eyes, and you wipe the moisture away with your wrist.

"If you are going to go off adventuring, you will need something suitable to wear. I know your feathers are thick, but I still want you to pack a sweater."

Baby laughs and hugs you, spouting incoherent words of thanks. You hold her to your heart and listen to the dissonance beating between you two.

Home is empty now that your daughter has flown the nest. You can feel her flitting across the globe like a snowflake in a blizzard with a thoroughly threatened guardian of fun. You are glad to know that he takes your daughter's safety seriously, and understands what will happen if anything untoward occurs.

Though Baby Tooth looks to be around Jack's age, the fairy still had some growing up to do on the inside.

A sigh escapes you as you direct the flocks across the world without your usual enthusiasm.

You look at yourself- every bit of yourself that is carried aloft by tiny jeweled wings, wondering at them. You see yourself through thousands of eyes, and wonder back.

Names have a curious magic. They separate beings from each other, differentiating one among millions, giving identity, and with that the possibility of individual thought and soul. Once named, a thing cannot be un-named.

You stretch out a hand, one fairy separating itself from the flock. You speak a name, and feel a spark within your mind flare. It flies from your thoughts, leaving a gossamer thread where once a thick connection held firm. You must not have noticed when Jack named Baby Tooth because of the trouble with Pitch.

The fairy in your hand shakes its head and scrubs both tiny hands across her face. You watch with interest from a thousand viewpoints.

She looks around at the multitude, and you think it might be intimidated, but for the first time you do not know immediately what one of your fairies is thinking.

You frown. No, the named ones are not just your fairies, they are more than that now. A smile reassures the tiny beating heart between your palms.

"You are my daughter now, my little flying daughter."

You wonder if the thread in your mind connecting your family together will cause problems in the future, should one of them become hurt.

"Mama!" squeaks the newest addition to your home.

Her words send your worry sailing away under a wave of love.

=Tooth=

This is actually the first chapter I wrote, because I wondered what it was like to have one thousand different perspectives. Here, Tooth pictures her fairies as extentions of herself, like how people see their limbs. The idea took root.

Next: More Bunny, but it is needed to go into North's story


	3. Bunny: Family Troubles

Disclaimer: if i owned this intellectual property, the movie would have had less plot holes.

=bunny=

It started when you realized just how different you were from the rest of your family.

Once you were the youngest in the Warren, but an accumulation of siblings moved you somewhere near the upper middle age wise.

Brow fur like your mother's coats your paws and green eyes peak out under floppy ears. Father says you just need to grow into your looks, but you always feel like you are tripping over your limbs.

Harvey, your favorite elder brother with white fur, can burrow through time the way your father burrows through the earth. He is different too, but different in a different way that you. After all, he can do magic (be it magic no one understands) and you cannot. Though not for a lack of trying.

You remember your mother encouraging you to change into a wolf as a kit, and your father rushing over to hush your terrified cries and tears. He showed you how to make tunnels that can go anywhere with just a tap of the foot, and when you failed that he asked if you felt others feelings like sister Lily could. When you denied such powers, both your parents got together to see if you had a green thumb, but you couldn't make a flower bloom to save your life.

Art is your only talent, if it could be acknowledged as such. You tried to help paint eggs once; father called them numerically geometric while mother said there measured in color and line. Your siblings laughed and asked why you used a straight edge to paint flowers.

"Do you not see how the correct petal to stem ratio creates a perfectly symmetrical daffodil?" They all look at you oddly.

You hide in a corner of the Warren, swearing never to explain your art again.

Brother Harvey finds you, and asks where your favorite time and place in the world is. You tell him you do not know, so he takes you to a library in midwest north America. One gift shared by all in your family is the ability to remain unseen, so the humans pose no hinderance as you look through the shelves.

Harvey points out almanacs and encyclopedias with pictures of pyramids and hanging gardens, but your eye is caught by an explosion of fire under a strange human device. You point at it.

"There?" Harvey's whiskers twitch out like your father's do when he is surprised or thinking. You nod. Your brother shrugs and does not press the matter. This is why he is your favorite sibling.

You hide together in the marsh and watch as the Apollo XIII rocket launches into space. It is less than a speck in the sky before you remember to breathe again. Harvey smiles knowingly. "Humans make some fun things, don't they." You can only nod.

Convincing Harvey to take you to more libraries does not take as much effort as you feared it would. Perhaps it is because, to your brother, time is never an issue.

You find a book full of compass drawn circles and stark angled lines. You forget to breathe again.

The Tooth Fairy leaves coins in exchange for teeth, so surely a dozen of your father's best Easter eggs is fair trade for one drafting book?

Large families are troublesome when privacy is what you seek. All the best mossy places in the shade are occupied and your most studious siblings have occupied the shared workrooms. You creep into the living quarters hoping that they are more likely to be empty this time of day.

You pass by your mother's cloister. The walls may once have been white, but layers of color decorate every surface. Blue sky domed above while thousands of birds freeze mid flap in migration to distant places above pastel trees and flowers.

Brother Carnation said father gave the room to mother on their wedding day. You do not think that is true, because sister Daisy showed you a box of photos taken at father's friend North's home. Mother is smiling with white flowers braided into her fur and father looks embarrassed while North forces them to face the camera with one of his bear hugs. The photos are dated much later than the paintings in the room would suggest.

If asked, you would suppose that the room was painted around the time they met, because of the rate of decay of a certain lead based paint used, but no one ever asked you anything.

"Hello dearest, what are you doing back here?" You spin around, book clutched to your chest. Mother smiles and brushes one floppy ear back from your eye. "Why are you not out playing with your brothers?"

"I wish to read," you say. "My siblings are too boisterous to respect such an activity."

Mother cards a paw over your head, claws tickling the tip of your nose. "You're just like your father, always so serious about your projects!"

All the ways you are not like your father rise to the surface of your thoughts, but you hold your tongue.

"Tell you what," mother says conspiratorially, "How about you use my special room over there? I'll make sure no one bothers you when you want to read or work on something. Would you like that?"

The gesture is appreciated, though the desperation with which it was offered betrayed your mother's lack of understanding of you. She tries though, and you love her for it.

"Thank you mother, I promise not to be a bother."

"You are never a bother," she says, nuzzling the top of your head.

The drafting book soon makes your paws itch for paper, as do the other books you sneak into the warren. Sketches of spheres, cubes, and eggs (such a nice shape) litter the dirt floor. Soon these give way to drawings of rockets and motorized vehicles. You find a book on engines and several meals have passed before you feel hungry enough to notice.

You take special care to never leave a mess in the colorful room when you are finished working, not just because it would be rude to abuse mother's offer with such behavior, but because you are not sure if your choice of interest is strictly acceptable for a rabbit in your family.

Such worries are why it took you so long to sneak an actual engine into the warren.

You pick the night before Easter, when father was out delivering eggs and your siblings were allowed to venture to the surface to spread belief in the Easter Bunny. Mother accompanied the younger kits to the less populated regions of earth where they were less likely to be disturbed.

The vehicle broke down too far away from any human establishment able to tow it away, so was left to rust on the roadside. The tools were borrowed from a store's clearance rack.

Extensive reading can only replace practical knowledge so far, thus it takes you several hours to dislodge the engine from the vehicle's cavity. You are not able to carry it, so you roll it along the ground to the tunnel you dug, and hope the mechanics will not be too damaged for you to examine.

You think you are home free when the your prize rolls out of one of the side tunnels into the warren and thumps against a moss covered stone.

A pained scream shatters the silence, and strong brown arms pull you away from the greased metal. The pride in your chest withers faster than a seedling in the sun.

"What is that? What is it doing in here? Dearest are you all right? Did you touch it? Did it burn you?"

"I am quite well mother," you try to reassure, as the alarm is raised. You forgot about mother's allergy to iron. It is not a topic of regular conversation in your family; there is no metal of any kind in the warren. Mother only mentions it when your siblings visit the surface as a warning for their safety.

"What's going on here?" Oh no, father's back. You want the earth to swallow you up right there, but instead cover your face with your paws.

"It is nothing-" you try to say, but mother's words skitter over your own like water.

"Cold iron- there!" She pointed with a claw.

Father's whiskers puff out. "How did it get into the warren?"

"I brought it here!" you shout. Both parents look at you. Mother looks stunned, father pensive.

"What? Are you hurt? Let me see your paws!"

Father brushes off mother's attempts to examine your limbs and sets you gently on the ground. Green eyes bore into your own. "You brought that in here, yeah?"

You nod, pressure pulsing behind your eyes.

"Why did you do it? You know it hurts your mum."

"I just wanted to take it apart," you whimper. "I did not mean any harm!"

Grey ears flicked. "Why would you want to do that?"

"I- I j-just," pins prick the corners of your eyes, "I have b-been reading about- about human things, like- like rockets and cars and space ships, and- and I just- just-" You burry your face in your claws.

Your feet leave the ground and you feel father's chuckle rumble through his chest. "You just wanted to have a look-see, yeah?"

You nod, adding your won arms to the embrace.

"We can't have metal in the warren," he chides, "so how about you and me get this back up to the surface." Whiskers twitch against the top of your head. "Then maybe I can ask North if he has an extra workshop in the pole you can use."

You do not trust yourself to speak, and clutch your father's fur more tightly.

=Bunny=


End file.
